One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Key Facts

Quiz

Study Questions

1. Why
does Solzhenitsyn call the protagonist by the name “Ivan Denisovich”
in the title but by the name “Shukhov” almost everywhere else in
the narrative?

One result of Solzhenitsyn’s calling Shukhov
by two different names is an emphasis on the power and importance
of names in human relationships. The difference between “Shukhov”
and “Ivan Denisovich” is the difference between cold official talk
and cordial familiarity. The family name “Shukhov” connotes bureaucracy
and government information files. The first and middle names “Ivan Denisovich,”
by contrast, evoke trusting and confidential conversations in which
people care for each other and in which information is revealed
without fear that it will be misused.

The use of these different types of names can show solidarity
or imply mistrust. The camp inmates tend to address each other in
the friendly “Ivan Denisovich” manner, with the Christian name first and
the patronymic, or father’s name, second. This form of address creates
a sense of equality. However, the prisoners do not trust Fetyukov,
and therefore call him only by his family name. Tyurin, who outranks
the other characters, is also known exclusively by his last name,
emphasizing his distanced official status.

These variations in naming show the various ways in which
the characters relate to each other. They interact alternately as
random strangers and close friends. Shukhov’s struggle in the novel
can be described as a conflict between being known officially as
the government statistic “Shcha-854”
or “Shukhov,” and being known familiarly and lovingly as “Ivan Denisovich.”

2.

one
day in the life of ivan denisovich is
one of the most famous political novels of the twentieth century.
Yet its protagonist never voices any political opinions. What is so
political about this novel?

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was
politically significant because of what it depicted rather than
for the opinions it expressed. Solzhenitsyn wrote about situations
and people that the Soviet state had not previously allowed authors
to describe. The fact that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich discusses
the problems with communists’ conception of labor made its publication
a landmark political event in Soviet history. The labor camps themselves
had never been mentioned in Soviet literature. Everyone knew they
existed, if only because so many people had family members who had
been sent there. But no one was allowed to talk about the camps.
The idea of publishing a work set in a Stalinist labor camp would
have been unheard of in Stalin’s regime (Stalin died in 1953,
and the novel is set in 1951). It took the
softening of Soviet Communism in the early 1960s,
a period known as the “thaw,” to enable public discussion of the
unjust camp system and even an official admission that they were
a mistake. The publication of Solzhenitsyn’s novel was another major
step toward a public government admission of Stalin’s errors.

3.

Why does
Solzhenitsyn describe only a single day of Shukhov’s life?

Solzhenitsyn’s one-day plot emphasizes the
fact that Shukhov’s days belong to the Soviet government rather
than to Shukhov himself. A day for a free citizen may be just a
unit of time in the flow of life. But a day for Shukhov is part
of his sentence, and thus has a powerful political significance.
His day is not planned out according to his individual desires and
whims, like the lives of many novelistic protagonists. Rather, his
day is strictly dictated from above, by the high Soviet powers that
be. By focusing on one governmentally regulated day in the sentence
of a political prisoner, Solzhenitsyn shows the weariness and tedium
of the life of a labor camp inmate.

The focus on the events of a single day corresponds to
the way Shukhov lives his life in camp. He thinks only of the present
and immediate concerns, not of the future. In most novels, the events
of a single day are important because their consequences carry over into
the future. Time is essentially meaningless for Shukhov, however.
In such a limited life, little affects the future. Shukhov may get an
extra ration of bread one day, but that ration has nothing to do with
how much bread he will get the next day. This limitation compels
Shukhov to pay attention to minute experiences and not worry about
the future.

Suggested Essay Topics

1. Solzhenitsyn’s realistic
narrative style provides us with a lot of detail about Shukhov’s
everyday life in the labor camp. By contrast, there are huge areas
of Shukhov’s life that are not detailed at all. We never learn his
wife’s name, for example. Why does Solzhenitsyn provide so many
details about some areas of Shukhov’s life and so few about others?

2. Readers disagree about whether
camp life has made Shukhov a more humane person or a more selfish
and inconsiderate one. He is hardworking, faithful, and reliable.
But he is remarkably uncharitable toward the old prisoner at dinner and
unsympathetic toward Buynovsky when Buynovsky gets thrown in the
hole. How would you characterize Shukhov’s moral state?

3. At first, Tyurin is depicted
as a tough, cold official, a mask of authority with little humanity.
But after the storytelling session at the Power Station when he
narrates the crime that got him into the camp, Tyurin seems much
more human. Why does Solzhenitsyn show this change? What does this
transition suggest about Soviet attitudes toward authority?

4. Shukhov is the envy of the
camp because his sentence is almost over, yet he does not rejoice
at his impending freedom. In fact, he appears almost indifferent
to his upcoming release. Why is Shukhov so unconcerned with his
day of liberation from the labor camp?

5. Solzhenitsyn’s authorial voice
is simple. He uses few abstract nouns and few complex sentence structures.
Why does Solzhenitsyn choose to narrate in such a basic style?